Nov. 15, 2022 - Bannon's War Room
46:37
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is what you're fighting for. | ||
| I mean, every day you're out there. | ||
| What they're doing is blowing people off. | ||
| If you continue to look the other way and shut up, then the oppressors, the authoritarians, get total control and total power. | ||
| Because this is just like in Arizona. | ||
| This is just like in Georgia. | ||
| It's another element that backs them into a corner and shows their lies and misrepresentations. | ||
| This is why this audience is going to have to get engaged. | ||
| As we've told you, this is the fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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All this nonsense, all this spin, they can't handle the truth. | |
| War Room Battleground. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| It is Monday, 14 November in the year of our Lord 2022. | ||
| We're almost a week after the election and I tell you so much is happening. | ||
| We got the lame duck about to start which is going to be this orgy of malfeasance here in the United States. | ||
| I don't even know why they let people that have just either been voted out of office or left office participate in passing laws, but they do until the last day. | ||
| Of course, they've already stolen in Nevada and other places, and you've got the house up in the air. | ||
| We don't know if it's 219, 220, 221. | ||
| ascertained. They're trying to steal it from Carrie Lake out in Arizona. Of course they've already stolen it in Nevada and other places and you've got the house up in the air. We don't know if it's 219, 220, 221. | ||
| We're gonna have Congressman Matt Gaetz is going to join us shortly. He's coming, he's gonna go on the record and say he's not voting for, he's not gonna vote for McCarthy as a speaker. | ||
| Already laid that out. | ||
| MTG shocked the political world today, came on War Room. | ||
| It's up on Mediat right now, just put it up on Getter. | ||
| She said, hey, to avoid a Liz Cheney speakership, she is going to back McCarthy. | ||
| And of course, you know, Jake Sherman, of a punch bowl called it the MTG wing of the party, which is the House Freedom Caucus, other populists, other nationalists. We thought we'd get Russ Vought in here. We got so much going on and all these major issues, events and events that we want to Russ and come on here and talk about a lot of it. But first, Russ, I got to ask you about you're the first one that really came out and you don't really get that involved in. | ||
| It seems like an elective politics a lot, but you'd had a belly full of this. | ||
| You came out with really, I think, a brilliant. | ||
| I forget. | ||
| It was like a 14 point. | ||
| uh twitter stream last week thread that laid out the case against uh the cartel the case against the cabal on capitol hill what say you is it's heating up they're supposed to do it tomorrow they're talking about pushing it off the knives are out annie biggs has announced annie biggs from the house freedom caucus and a friend of the war room on the show a lot very close to him personally has announced he's running for speaker um it seems like it's complete chaos on capitol hill what say you sir | ||
| Yeah, the Biggs candidacy is very important for two reasons. | ||
| Number one, it gives the House Freedom Caucus a holding pattern for them to be able to articulate that they're against McCarthy and to set the stage for an endgame down the road. | ||
| But it's also very critical because it prevents the number one excuse from being made by a non-HFC member, and that is, no one was in the race. | ||
| That's what they use. | ||
| That's the defining excuse that they go home, and I call it mansplaining to their voters, And what they say is no one's in the race. | ||
| And so I voted for McCarthy. | ||
| That is now not an option with the candidacy of Andy Biggs. | ||
| So right now we are ahead of schedule. | ||
| You know, the McCarthy forces were really freaking out all weekend. | ||
| They know they don't have the votes. | ||
| Matt Gaetz will tell you they don't have the votes. | ||
| Let me also address Congressman Greene's comments. | ||
| And I love Marjorie. | ||
| She's one of my favorite members of Congress. | ||
| Uh, and this is an issue we disagree on, but rubbing is racing. | ||
| Look, the issue of the Liz Cheney speaker is not real. | ||
| Liz Cheney, first of all, doesn't have a vote. | ||
| It's, you don't need his vote to be a speaker, but she doesn't have a vote. | ||
| And you need Republican votes to make with Democrats to be able to create a speaker in that vein. | ||
| That is the kin to switching parties. | ||
| And we know there are a lot of moderate Republicans, but voting for another speaker of a Democrat party is a death knell in a primary. | ||
| It is an immediate and it is a likely win. | ||
| How do we know? | ||
| Because we just saw it with regard to Adam Kinzinger And Liz Cheney herself. | ||
| So this is not real. | ||
| That doesn't mean there are the votes for Jim Jordan or Andy Biggs or even Lee Zeldin. | ||
| But what it means is that there is massive leverage and that this is not a real threat. | ||
| And we know also from history, this is something that everyone kept talking about with regard to John Boehner. | ||
| It never materialized. | ||
| It can't materialize. | ||
| And it can't materialize on the Democrat side. | ||
| Because they have their own issue with regard to if it's an actual Republican who switches, they can't come over because they have their own primary issues. | ||
| The only way it could potentially be an issue is with a Republican that has effectively, like Bill Kristol or Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger, become a Democrat. | ||
| Functionally and is voting and like they are doing with the J6 to govern that way. | ||
| Those members are no longer in office. | ||
| There are no other members that have crossed that Rubicon. | ||
| It is not a real threat. | ||
| I asked that of MTG today because she's become one of the more serious and tough players in the Hill. | ||
| Was she taking the bait for something that's put out there by the McCarthy guys that's not real to get to cut? | ||
| Look, the Freedom Caucus is what, 45, 50 people? | ||
| Is it to take out 30 of the Freedom Caucus guys in concern about that, led by MTG, where you would have 20 or 30 people against this? | ||
| Now you're maybe down to 10. | ||
| Even if you got 10, it's enough to drive this in a different direction. | ||
| But do you think that that was a complete misdirection play by the McCarthy forces? | ||
| You know, I think, you know, with regard to a lot of members, and I don't want to speak on behalf of Marjorie, but they had a game plan going to the election. | ||
| They had kind of come to ground with Speaker McCarthy and the election changed that. | ||
| And when you have a new battlefield, you make different play calls and you go out on the result of something, you have new opportunities and new potential. | ||
| And as a result, you have to make different decisions. | ||
| And I think people, Throughout the conference made a decision that I think is going to be right, wrong or indifferent from their perspective is going to be overridden by the House Freedom Caucus and the grassroots and the war room posse by saying that this is the leverage that we have on the House floor. | ||
| It's going to be realized and I think we're going to get real change. | ||
| But I think a lot of members coming into this said, OK, with a big seat majority, a red wave, how can we get comfortable with McCarthy? | ||
| And they all kind of thought and made their bed accordingly. | ||
| And we have a new opportunity. | ||
| After being on the other side of the election, and I've seen it, I've seen this leadership team from the inside. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy was part of the leadership team that I got to see behind closed doors. | ||
| And I have not seen any evidence other than him being OK to work with President Trump. | ||
| But I want someone that is OK with the America First agenda. | ||
| I want someone who's committed to the America First agenda when Donald Trump is temporarily in Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| That's what I want. | ||
| I don't want someone that is willing to play ball with President Trump. | ||
| While he's in office, I want someone who's actually committed to the issues in the agenda and wakes up realizing how late the hour is for our country and seizes the moment with every opportunity we have. | ||
| I think that's the opportunity that House Republicans can have. | ||
| There's many, many different endgames, whether that's Jim Jordan or whether that's seizing control of the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives. | ||
| The House Freedom Caucus actually owns all the process control. | ||
| There are many, many endgames here. | ||
| But I think it's important that we unpack what is real and what is not real, and Liz Cheney as a speaker is not a real threat. | ||
| Walk me through, what would a speakership, I'm not saying he's competitive right now, but he's an alternative. | ||
| What would a speakership under Andy Biggs look like? | ||
| It would look like for the first time the leadership team not being at war with the grassroots, not being at war with this program and the activists that it represents and talks to and channels and provides action plans for. | ||
| I got asked over the weekend, why does this never happen on the left? | ||
| And President Trump used to always joke around, why is it that the left, why the Democrats always stay together and everyone was divided on our side? | ||
| It's because their leadership team is committed to the objectives and the purposes of the Democratic Party and the left. | ||
| There is no daylight between the two. | ||
| So there is always a question of how far they can get or not. | ||
| But you never have to know that you're getting played. | ||
| Our leadership team is different. | ||
| Our leadership team is all about playing the grassroots. | ||
| They come up with shiny objects and they try to manage their activists away from the fight, away from the signal. | ||
| They move towards noise, in your words. | ||
| And so, an Andy Big speaker, a Jim Jordan speakership, even a Lee Zeldin speakership would look fundamentally different. | ||
| It would look like real talk to real grassroots and saying, This is the fight and getting as far as you possibly can and knowing that you don't have all the power in the world. | ||
| We're not asking for you to win on every occasion. | ||
| We're asking you to fight on every occasion and to fight with all of your might. | ||
| I think that's what you would see under Andy Biggs. | ||
| I've got to get to the Omnibus and the debt ceiling in a second. | ||
| I don't want to leave time for that. | ||
| But they're going to meet tomorrow, on Tuesday, to do, I guess, the first vote for the leadership now. | ||
| Why is that important? | ||
| And that will take place, it looks like, anyway, because it just takes a majority of the conference, I think. | ||
| And that is also in secret. | ||
| That's a secret ballot, I believe. | ||
| Walk people through the process over the next couple of weeks. | ||
| We don't want to take it all the way to the Speaker's vote in January. | ||
| Over the next couple of weeks, what should people look for? | ||
| The real vote is in January. | ||
| That's the leverage point. | ||
| That's the moment where you have to go to the house of the floor, it's all in front of the cameras, and say who you're voting for and who you're not voting for. | ||
| Tomorrow, or Wednesday, is the cartel vote. | ||
| It's behind closed doors. | ||
| Think of it as a locker room. | ||
| It has a lot of the atmospherics of a locker room. | ||
| The team, the rah-rah, don't be against the team. | ||
| That's the nature of what the cartel is like and it's going to be hard for House Republicans, House Conservatives that are against Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| But what they need to know is none of it's real. | ||
| None of it's real. | ||
| All it is is an opportunity for them to go in there and say, I'm not for Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| I'm not for Andy Biggs or some other person who might be running. | ||
| That's what this is for. | ||
| So if there's any drama, it is the extent to which the no votes we have will have a sense of, but we, you know, it's behind closed doors. | ||
| But it will be a shot across the bow to the McCarthy votes that they have a growing problem. | ||
| I think a fatal problem with regard to his candidacy. | ||
| But again, I think it's important for people to realize it is one part of this, and it is a part of a process that grows and builds to January where the real vote occurs. | ||
| Whether we're at 219, 220, 221, or a few votes more, 5, 6, 7, 8 members of the House Freedom Caucus, if they're, and it looks under the leadership of Biggs and Gates, if they dig in and say anybody but McCarthy, how do the McCarthy forces get around that? | ||
| Because it's kind of a, you've got command by negation is what we call it in the military. | ||
| How do they really get around that? | ||
| Steve, I don't want to be too presumptive, but that's why they're panicking. | ||
| I mean, they, we are very close to being a situation where three or four members themselves can dictate this and we're already at those numbers. | ||
| And then there are a lot of House Freedom Caucus members in reserve that are fully committed to the mission. | ||
| They just haven't publicly declared. | ||
| So, you know, we're in a very good place. | ||
| I would say that we are ahead of schedule in the sense that In previous speaker battles, you really had to build all through November, December to get to January where members were finally waking up to the cartel-busting nature of what their grassroots was demanding, and we are ahead of schedule on this. | ||
| I got to turn to this lame duck session, because this is going to be horrific. | ||
| You've warned about this. | ||
| We've talked about this now for six months. | ||
| But you have an omnibus bill that looks like it could be a trillion, trillion and a half, two trillion dollars, totally unfunded, over and above the transfer payments of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which would be about three and a half trillion dollars. | ||
| You could be looking at a five, five and a half trillion dollar omnibus bill that's not financed, and the Federal Reserve is making every argument they want to get out of this business. | ||
| The fiscal domination of the legislative side, as Bloomberg calls it, is coming to an end. | ||
| You saw that in England. | ||
| In addition, Nancy Pelosi goes on TV yesterday, I think it was on ABC, and she's going to a whole interview, and she says the most important thing that she's got to accomplish In the lame duck before she kind of turns things over is the debt ceiling. | ||
| They're interconnected. | ||
| Uh, Ross walk people through what should be the concerns people should have, whether the pitfalls in what the war room posse can do about it. | ||
| So they are interconnected, but they, that's also partly by design. | ||
| So you take a government shutdown situation where. | ||
| for the discretionary spending, if it expires, you don't have money for these agencies. | ||
| That is a different situation than a debt limit where if you have money coming in, you could still spend that money out. | ||
| You don't have enough to spend for all of the commitments that the federal government has made, but there's always enough for principle and interest. | ||
| So what the cartel does is they merge the fights. | ||
| So you're saying that in that case, cash is coming in and in the cap table, the first thing that gets paid are the interest and principal. | ||
| Like in life, you've got to pay your bills first, particularly ones you owe to the bank or credit cards. | ||
| So when they say default on the debt, you're saying that's a lie? | ||
| That is. | ||
| That is an intentional Merging of the words default. | ||
| They will say that interest in principle is the same thing as NIH funding for the Wuhan Institute. | ||
| I mean, there is a difference between what bills have to be paid for the full faith and credit and what don't or what don't have to get done on time. | ||
| And they have intentionally over defined the word default. | ||
| So that's one part of it. | ||
| So in the lame duck, we have two trains that are going to be leaving the station. One has to and one doesn't have to. One is the annual appropriations process and it's vital. It is absolutely vital that Republicans in the Senate do not give Joe Biden a full year appropriations bill. We will be out of the business of any kind of activism against the regime if that occurs. So that's | ||
| one part of the fight. But you and I know because we've been texting about it for the last several weeks, they're also trying to do a debt debt limit increase, and they're going to try to use a reconciliation. | ||
| Now, that one would require, if they don't, similar to the approach, that would require, if they don't have that procedure, they would have to get 60 votes. | ||
| But they're trying to use this special procedure to be able to avoid the filibuster. | ||
| And then it comes down to Joe Manchin. | ||
| And I think they've got you know, I think that will be hard for them to get Joe Manchin, but not impossible as we've seen this last year So those two things are are vital now. | ||
| I think the real fight will be on appropriations, but I think they will try to get a debt limit because they know historically we have leveraged that for fiscal reforms and we will be in a much better place to do that next year. | ||
| So, again, they're trying to merve these issues together so that it's hard for them to, so that they have as much opportunity as possible to just clear the debts. | ||
| That's the other word that they say. | ||
| They don't want any leverage points. | ||
| The cartel never wants leverage points before the floor of the House or Senate where the cameras are, where there are actual votes. | ||
| They want everything done behind closed doors and they want everything kind of bums rush so that when they have two years, you hear them say, we wanna get this through to the next election. | ||
| Why do they want that? | ||
| They want that so they don't actually have to come before the American people for two years. | ||
| I Russ, we want to have you back on tomorrow, but we'll work with your team to do this. | ||
| There's so much to go through with this, the politics of it and also the economics and capital markets impact of it. | ||
| Where do people go to find out all the great work you're doing and to find out more about the details of what you guys are proposing? | ||
| Yeah, we are at at Russ Vote on all the channels and we are updating those in real time and they can get us at the website at americarenewing.com. | ||
| In just a few short weeks, we will have an America First budget that shows how to balance and tend, preserve all of the important things that we actually care about as conservatives, as nationalists, and then goes to war with the woke and weaponized regime bureaucracy that Congress is trying to fund at the end of this year. | ||
| Russ Vogt, honored to have you on here, a main player right now. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| The intensity of this is only going to increase. | ||
| We've had Matt Gaetz on, obviously, a close friend of the show and a brilliant strategist and a member of Congress. | ||
| Can we play the clip? | ||
| I want to play the clip from earlier today in the Charlie Kirk show and then bring Congressman Gaetz in. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
|
unidentified
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What I'm saying, though, is that if it came down to supporting someone like Kevin or in the mold of Kevin, You know, is there any... If that were to happen, Charlie, that would solely be by Kevin's hand. | |
| Because once five Republicans stand up and say, we're never voting for Kevin, then if Kevin chooses to persist, it would be him putting our majority... Who would those five people be? | ||
| Well, I think that they would be the people that reliably adhere to the promises that they make to their voters. | ||
| I'm not here to like out or dox anybody. | ||
| I'll let people make their own announcements in their own time. | ||
| I'm making my announcement, which is that I'm not voting for Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| I'm not voting for him tomorrow. | ||
| I'm not voting for him on the floor. | ||
| And I am certain that there is a critical mass of people Hold my precise view. | ||
| And so the sooner we can sort of dispense with the notion that Kevin's going to be speaker, then we can get to the important work of actually looking at who are the people that Brian Fitzpatrick and Matt Gaetz can agree on. | ||
| Okay, we're bringing in Matt Gaetz now. | ||
| He couldn't hold himself. | ||
| He had to break in on the Charlie Kirk show, but we love Charlie Kirk. | ||
| He's got a big audience. | ||
| We have a bigger audience, but I'm just saying, no. | ||
| Congressman Gaetz, your closest ally, in fact, she said today that you were her closest friend in Congress and her closest ally, came on the show today. | ||
| It made a fairly compelling case of why your other firebrand wingman is actually for Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| Key Walker, can you compare and contrast her thinking to what you're thinking? | ||
| We know Andy Biggs has announced that he, it looks like he's announced he's running for the speakership also. | ||
| Can you walk us, compare and contrast you and Congressman Gates? | ||
| Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is my friend and she will continue to be my friend long after this leadership issue is resolved. | ||
| But we see this very differently. | ||
| Right now, we are in a process of elimination paradigm. | ||
| Because as the math is working out, any five people, five America First Congress members, five more moderate Republicans, can get together and functionally veto any one person as leader. | ||
| So within the Republican conference, we are going to have to have a coalition governance, not by virtue of my choice or anyone else's, but by virtue of How these elections are getting sorted out. | ||
| And we're taking losses in California, where we should have won. | ||
| And frankly, we got wins in New York State that no one ever believed would happen. | ||
| And while I deeply care about Marjorie Taylor Greene, I see what a warrior and a fighter she is in the movement, my concern is that we cannot trust Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| This is the same Kevin McCarthy who said that I was a danger to others because I verbally criticized Liz Cheney. | ||
| This is the same Kevin McCarthy who spent tens of millions of dollars in primaries against America First candidates. | ||
| And then when people like Caroline Leavitt and Joe Kent prevailed in their primaries, they were in a worse shape to go and face the general election because Kevin McCarthy had spent so much money against them in the primary. | ||
| I mean, I look at Yvette Harrell in New Mexico, who's only going to lose by a small handful of votes. | ||
| And what if instead of attacking Republicans and Supporters of President Trump, we put those tens of millions of dollars behind her candidacy. | ||
| So I think there were strategic decisions that were wrong. | ||
| I think those strategic decisions illuminate a lack of trust. | ||
| And whatever Kevin has promised Marjorie Taylor Greene, I guarantee you this, at the first opportunity, he will zap her faster than you could say Jewish space laser. | ||
| And I wish that wasn't the case, but it is the Conduct, and it is the pattern and practice of Kevin McCarthy over years that showcase this. | ||
| And there's going to be a vote tomorrow, and Kevin's going to overwhelmingly win that vote, but there are going to be dozens of Republicans who do not vote for Kevin McCarthy tomorrow. | ||
| Now, Kevin has had years to earn their vote. | ||
| He's had years to earn it, and maybe he earned Marjorie Taylor Greene's. | ||
| But the fact that there are dozens of people, as of tomorrow, who aren't ready to vote for Kevin McCarthy, you have to somehow believe that magically, between tomorrow and January 3rd, he's going to make up the ground that he hasn't made up with every tool he's already had as leader during the election cycle. | ||
| And he did all he could to get rid of the America First people, but there are enough of us around where we would rather deal with someone who might be a little more moderate than our way of thinking If we have someone who is honest with us and who has agency and will work with us to unlock the potential of all of the members. | ||
| I want to make sure people understand, I want to go back to a little bit of history. | ||
| This is not something that just kind of came up over the last couple of days, even from last Tuesday. | ||
| You were on this show, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was actually in August, and you walked through a scenario that said, hey look, if it's anywhere between, you know, five and eight total pickups, you know, or not just pickups, over the 218, Kevin McCarthy's not going to be speaker. | ||
| And what, everything you said, Kind of became true. | ||
| How did you know back then? | ||
| What was, what was the indication to you that the strategy he had for actually building a, a, a, a bigger majority, you know, going after Caroline Levitt, going after Ana Paulina Luna, going after Harold, going after Joe Kent and others. | ||
| How did you know at the time? | ||
| Because I tell people, Hey, think of what you think of Gates. | ||
| This is a called shot and they're in the situation now that everything he said was going to come to pass is come to pass. | ||
| Matt Gates. | ||
| Well, I see how Kevin McCarthy treats people, and I see how he treats the institution. | ||
| Like, it is not a bug of the system that we never get time to review legislation, that a small group of people control the decision-making in Washington. | ||
| It is a feature of that system, and it is a system that Kevin McCarthy has fully embraced. | ||
| The best defense people give of Kevin is that he is the LeBron James of special interest fundraising, and I will give him that. | ||
| There has never been anyone better at raising like $500 million to go deploy around the country. | ||
| The problem is when you don't have the value set to undergird that, and when you don't have the tactical ability to make decisions that grows the majority to at least meet expectations, then ultimately you're not the person to be the Speaker of the House. | ||
| We need a fresh start. | ||
| We need a new person. | ||
| We need to turn the page on the leadership that has underperformed expectations and that have let us down. | ||
| And I don't care if they raise a billion dollars. | ||
| I don't care if they go wash the car of every lobbyist in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I want to make sure that we have people who are honest with the membership. | ||
| And look, I've been fielding calls from people who are not Freedom Caucus, who are not far right, but who feel they've been lied to and let down. | ||
| And I think the call for a change to Kevin McCarthy will be very evident in the number of people who still can't vote for him. | ||
| That's what the McCarthy loyalists can't really explain to me. | ||
| When like, you know, 20, 30 people don't vote for him tomorrow, what's going to get people to vote for him by January when they weren't willing to vote for him now? | ||
| And the only vote that matters is in January. | ||
| Everything up to that ranges between preliminary and perfunctory. | ||
| On January 3rd, we elect the Speaker. | ||
| And if you got 218 votes, you get to be the Speaker of the House. | ||
| Kevin McCarthy does not have 218 votes today, and he won't have it on January 3rd. | ||
| Matt, can you hang on for one second? | ||
| I just want to hold you through the break because I want to ask you what you would want this to look like on the other side if you and your colleagues prevail. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to be back. | ||
| As we said, there are multiple things going on right now. | ||
| Elections have not been finished. | ||
| You saw in the previous hour, Arizona, also these house races, particularly in California, they're stretching them out. | ||
| We're going to have Tina Deskovitz on following Congressman Matt Gaetz to talk about massive victories for the parental rights movement for all the school boards. | ||
| And we're going to have Matt Gaetz in here to explain exactly what his objective is, exactly what is he looking for, what does he hope to accomplish, and what will the new Congress look like. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| Congressman Matt Gaetz will join us on the other side in the War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room Battleground with Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| Okay, welcome back, Congressman Matt Gaetz. | ||
| There's an open revolt in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives. | ||
| Looks like right now they're going to get to 18, 19, 20, 21, who knows. | ||
| We're going to go through that in excruciating detail tomorrow morning. | ||
| Congressman Gaetz, what is your objective? | ||
| You've said now for months, this is not something you just thought up, you said for months that this must happen and it will happen. | ||
| It's a called shot. | ||
| But I think people that are still uncertain about What is your objective? | ||
| What do you want the conference to do? | ||
| What do you want the Speaker to do? | ||
| What is the new House of Representatives going to do with, for, or against the Biden regime, sir? | ||
| New leadership is the tactic, but it is not an end done to itself. | ||
| Frankly, I think we need new leadership in the Senate, where my fellow Floridian Marco Rubio is pushing to delay Any election that would benefit Mitch McConnell. | ||
| I think we need new leadership at the Republican National Committee, and certainly we need new leadership in the House. | ||
| What does that unlock for us? | ||
| This is something the War Room Posse might not want to hear. | ||
| But because of the bad decisions of Kevin McCarthy, because of the foolish tactics on the campaign trail, because of the commitment to America, which was like something that Frank Luntz wrote on the back of a bar napkin more than it was a bold agenda, because of all those things, | ||
| We underperformed expectations, and that lack of performance is going to mean that you're not going to get everything you want out of this Republican majority, and neither am I. And I'm very disappointed by that, but we have to maximize our opportunity to make gains where we can, and we have to understand the features of leverage. | ||
| We are going to be the ballast against admitting Puerto Rico as the 51st state, or expanding the Supreme Court, or just a new flash flood of government entitlement spending to pay people not to work in our economy and in our country. | ||
| They'll want to do everything they can to green light a bunch of illegal aliens towards citizenship and we'll have to block that. | ||
| So, in a way, the incoming speaker has to be the defensive coordinator for the American people on a lot of those fronts. | ||
| Where can we play offense? | ||
| The investigations. | ||
| And what I know from Kevin McCarthy is that the truth's not in him when it comes to these investigations. | ||
| Do you really believe, is there a single American who really believes that Kevin McCarthy is going to be aggressive on investigations when it was his idea to get President Trump to accept a censure after January 6th? | ||
| This guy's had tougher talk for President Trump after January 6th than he's had for the national security apparatus that potentially was increasing the criminal acuity of the day. | ||
| So when the chips are down, you really see whether or not people have the instinct of fight. | ||
| Or flight. | ||
| And my objective is to have a Republican conference that is willing to fight, not run away, not concede, not give up ground. | ||
| And so to do that, we cannot have someone who lies to us. | ||
| We cannot have someone who is going to dole out these subpoenas ever so slowly, refuse to enforce them, slow walk the inquiries that absolutely need to happen, that in a just world would result in the impeachment of Ali Mayorkas. | ||
| But and others as well, by the way, that just would be my leadoff hitter. | ||
| But when it comes to our leash to be able to do what we have to do, here's what you got to know. | ||
| Just like Chuck Schumer couldn't go much further than where Joe Manchin was willing to take him, we might not be able in the House Republican majority to go much further than where Don Bacon and Brian Fitzpatrick and Dave Joyce and Other members of our moderate caucus are willing to go. | ||
| So rather than play a bunch of games and lie to the American people and tell them we're going to do a bunch of stuff that we aren't really going to do, which is the embodiment of the McCarthy strategy, I say, let's sit down. | ||
| Let's build that coalition government. | ||
| Let's bring in the moderate Republicans, the America First Republicans, Freedom Caucus members, representatives from some of the larger states that constitute our majority, and let's go build the operational strategy That gets this economy back on track, seals the border, and ensures that we unleash American energy. | ||
| And while doing that, the very investigations we would pursue would showcase how the corrupt decisions of the Biden administration are harming the American people. | ||
| We could all get on board with that. | ||
| But it is going to be the slow boat to China with Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| It is going to be the Paul Ryan, Trey Gowdy playbook that he was very willing to run plays out of during his entire time. | ||
| in leadership and which he will not deviate from today. | ||
| He'll tell you today that he's going to do those things, but I'm telling you when the chips are down, it's not going to happen. | ||
| And the reason I know I'm going to be successful in ensuring we get a different option than Kevin McCarthy is because I have like way more than double the votes I need to ensure that he is not speaker because we have such a slim majority as a result of his own choices. | ||
| It's sort of poetic as a matter of fact that these people put the handcuffs on themselves by spending all this money attacking America first candidates squandering the resources that people had given us to preserve the majority and then making it harder for our Republican nominees to come together and battle the Democrats. | ||
| Battling the Democrats, that's what we have to do, and we have to build a strategy that is an inclusive strategy, maybe even with people who aren't Matt Gaetz-flavored Republicans. | ||
| I'm willing to acknowledge that that has to happen. | ||
| I'm willing to acknowledge that the viewpoints of people from states that don't look like Florida, from districts that don't look like mine, are going to be just as dispositive on this process as my own views. | ||
| But what I can say for certain is that Kevin McCarthy is not going to be Speaker of the House. | ||
| What's so powerful about this is that, you know, in the fog of war, right, it's critical to kind of keep your eye right on it. | ||
| You've had your eye right on it the entire time. | ||
| You've been the one guy that's been right. | ||
| Before I let you guys, I want to pull the camera back for a second. | ||
| Politics is the art of the practical, the possible, and you just walked through, I think, a master class in that. | ||
| But for Matt Gaetz, when you look at where the country is in a perfect world, What are the one or two things you think has to happen in the next year on Capitol Hill, sir? | ||
| This government has been weaponized against the people of our country. | ||
| We have seen it in school board meetings. | ||
| We have seen it in the unity of purpose between big government and big media and big tech. | ||
| We've seen it in the deprivations of our liberties. | ||
| So the number one thing is that we have to stop our own government from the inward turning of these exquisite authorities Against our fellow Americans. | ||
| And it really is like the social credit score that they're trying to create for all of us in the financial sector, in the political sector, and in the social sector. | ||
| So I think that is number one. | ||
| And the other thing, you know, taxes can rise and fall. | ||
| Regulations can be implemented and repealed. | ||
| But what is happening on our border right now, in a lot of ways, is unidirectional and linear. | ||
| Like, you let four million people into this country illegally, And then they start having kids who somehow get treated just as if they're as American as you and I. And then they start pulling on the chain of chain migration. | ||
| You start to change this country in ways where even a new government, a new focused administration would have a very hard time turning back some of those tides. | ||
| So I would say, let's get our government focused on our enemies, not our citizens. | ||
| And then let's ensure that this border is secure. | ||
| If we could focus on that, I really think our economic conditions would improve, our political conditions would improve, and we would be able to have the wins in 2024 that we deserved and should have had in 2022. | ||
| Bad strategy, bad tactics led us to this moment. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| In most areas of life, If you screw up and underperform, you don't get promoted. | ||
| Only in politics, only in the corrupt swamp of Washington, D.C., can you totally blow it and still even be in line for a promotion. | ||
| I think that almost all these people in leadership should be swept out, turn the page, fresh start, new focus, protect our fellow Americans, secure the border, right the ship with the economy, and get back to campaigning for a Republican in 2024. | ||
| Congressman Gates, how can people follow you on social media because over the next, people should follow you anyway, but the next 72 hours specifically, how do people follow you? | ||
| I've got a podcast called Firebrand where I give regular updates regarding leadership races and other policy matters before the Congress. | ||
| Folks can follow me at Matt Gates, M-A-T-T-G-A-E-T-Z, or at Rep. | ||
| Matt Gates on just about all platforms. | ||
| Congressman Gates, thank you very much. | ||
| Honored to have you here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Could be back with the honey badger. | ||
| Let's go get him. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That was a masterclass. | ||
| Congressman Gates brought up a very important topic about weaponizing the United States government against its citizens. | ||
| One of the biggest topics of this started in 2021, in really the spring, was about parents and about the Justice Department under Merrick Garland, considering parents going to the school board meetings, whether it's for mass mandates, vaccines, CRT, gender ideology, any of it, to be domestic terrorists. | ||
| Groups came together. | ||
| Moms for Liberty is a key one. | ||
| Tina Deskovitz joins us right now. | ||
| Tina, I've been wanting to get you and Tiffany on for last week. | ||
| You guys really put your shoulder to the wheel in these incredibly important school board meetings. | ||
| I think at the time there was, you had 275, I think 280 potential people running who had endorsed or had backed. | ||
| Can you get us up to date on just across the country? | ||
| What was the mood? | ||
| Did the parental rights movement have a good night last Tuesday and where do you guys stand? | ||
| So we had a really great night Tuesday. | ||
| We've already started compiling for the year. | ||
| As you know, school board races are year round, you know, and they're in New York in May and April. | ||
| They're in Wisconsin. | ||
| And so we are constantly working on endorsing candidates and following what's going on. | ||
| So our total number for 2022 has surpassed 500 endorsements or supporting in the races. | ||
| And so we're starting to tally those. | ||
| And they seem to be coming in at the same ratio as they came in with the 270 on November the 8th. | ||
| So around the country in general, we have won over 50% of those races. | ||
| We still have about 37 of them out. | ||
| California apparently takes two weeks to count their ballots in these small school board races, which is remarkable. | ||
| Then we've got some others in Maryland and different places that are still counting. | ||
| But we're really happy with how it's turned out. | ||
| And what's more remarkable is In Florida, which is the only place we had any dollars to put behind some of these races. | ||
| So we have a little pack here in Florida. | ||
| We had $50,000 that one donor gave us and we were able to put some money behind our 65 candidates and we had an 80% win rate in Florida. | ||
| So one thing we've learned out of this election cycle for us this year is that when we have even just a little bit of money to put with our mom's enthusiasm on the ground, we're able to really make a significant impact. | ||
| So here's the question, by the way, California, we know this from the House races, the four in California, they've told the Associated Press for the congressional districts it's going to take another two or three weeks. | ||
| Why is that in California? | ||
| And how many of your seats are, I'm not saying in jeopardy, but how many are essentially getting slow walked? | ||
| Well, we're looking at about, I think we've got 30 to 35 seats in California that we are waiting to hear from. | ||
| Two of our chapter chairs are actually running out of the southern end in the San Luis Obispo area. | ||
| They are ahead right now with the count, but we don't know how it's going to turn out. | ||
| They told us to sit tight. | ||
| It's going to be another couple weeks before we know, which is, it's just remarkable. | ||
| You know, I'm here in Florida and we knew within an hour the whole state, so. | ||
| So Tina, where do we stand with the parental rights movement? | ||
| Now that you've gone through the first cycle, the first cycle of elections, all the way from last spring, New York, Texas, Florida, to a midterm election, you've had some tremendous wins. | ||
| I mean, you guys have kind of stood this thing up in the last couple of years, but where do you think the overall movement stands right now? | ||
| I think the momentum is on our side. | ||
| If you watch what happened here in Florida on Tuesday and what happened with Governor DeSantis and all of our moms behind him and our school board races, and when a governor or someone with such authority that's popular gets behind some of these candidates and helps push them over the finish line, we can really start taking back the education system here in America. | ||
| So, tell us how you're going to go forward. | ||
| What is Moms4Liberty going to do? | ||
| I know you went from a standing start. | ||
| How many chapters are you in right now? | ||
| So we launched January 1st, 2021, which you know, with just two of us, Tiffany and I, we are now in 42 states, 250 chapters, 110,000 members or so. | ||
| We are working to grow. | ||
| I mean, as you know, the Teachers Union has had a stronghold in education for decades. | ||
| They are in all 13,000 school districts, so all 3,000 counties, and then they have local affiliates in every single school district. | ||
| And that's every single school board race. | ||
| We have a long way to go. | ||
| We're having great success but we have a long, long way to go. | ||
| 250 chapters. | ||
| We need to be in all 3,000 counties. | ||
| You know again great success, but the roadmap is to is to rival the unions because they are controlling education with the radical agenda That if you know even just this morning, I think NEA put out a tweet that said teachers You know know and love students the best and know what? | ||
| Know and love the children the best and they know what they need and parents are like are you listening at all? | ||
| you know are you guys paying attention at all because this fight is long from over and For 3,000, what is it, 3,000 counties and 13,000 school boards. | ||
| And your objective, I just want to make sure you understand, your objective is to basically have a Moms for Liberty or a Parents' Rights group in every school board. | ||
| So if it's 13,000, you want to represent all 13,000. | ||
| That's basically the plan. | ||
| Yeah, so we're structured by county, so our goal is to have 3,000 chapters, one for each county, and then each county has district leaders that oversee each school district. | ||
| So in Florida, each county is its own school district, so you only need one chapter chair, no district leads. | ||
| But in some, like Suffolk or Nassau, New York, sometimes you have up to 30 school districts, and that's just a lot for one volunteer mom to manage. | ||
| So she oversees the county, and then she gets 30 volunteers to oversee each school district. | ||
| Their ultimate goal is to have a Moms for Liberty member at every single school board meeting from now till the end of time, overseeing what's going on in public education in their community. | ||
| Last question. | ||
| Were your new members, are they going to be welcome with open arms at the school boards? | ||
| Or is this still going to be as contentious? | ||
| Is 23 going to be as contentious as 21 and 22? | ||
| Are we still going to see those videos of parents being shut down? | ||
| Are we still going to be seeing videos of the total lack of respect that these school boards and administrators and union members treat parents? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think they're learning their lesson at all. | ||
| They're still pushing back. | ||
| I think some school boards will be better, where we've gotten people elected and taken a majority. | ||
| We did flip a number of school boards we're very excited about, even in some very liberal areas. | ||
| Charleston, South Carolina, I think we won five seats. | ||
| Berkeley, South Carolina, six seats, took over those boards. | ||
| In Charleston, it was I think there's a nine-person board, and it was eight liberal-leaning, one conservative, and now it's a majority conservative. | ||
| So, you know, boards like that, those newly elected school board members are going to listen to parents, and I think you're going to see a much more open dialogue, and you're going to see those school districts thrive. | ||
| But there's a lot of work to be done in a lot of districts. | ||
| You're still going to see mics cut off. | ||
| You're still going to see parents upset. | ||
| I mean, just look at the national landscape. | ||
| They've learned nothing. | ||
| You know, when they look at the national elections, they're emboldened because we didn't have this big red conservative wave on a national level. | ||
| And so they're just still going to push their garbage on our children. | ||
| And they're not slowing down. | ||
| A lot of the papers, including the Wall Street Journal, said that this parental rights movement may be the most important cultural political movement that's come up in 30 or 40 years. | ||
| Do you agree with that? | ||
| 100% I agree with that. | ||
| And I'm just so honored to be in a leadership role with all of these moms and parents on the ground that are fighting Helping guide and direct them in any way I can. | ||
| One of my haters last night tagged me on Twitter with an old video from 2014 before I was even a school board member here in Florida speaking at one of our legislative delegation meetings. | ||
| It was the first time I ever attempted advocacy and I was nervous, but I went back and listened and I was speaking for parental rights then. | ||
| And I will continue to fight for parental rights. | ||
| They've been under attack for a long time, but people are just starting to wake up to that. | ||
| I'm just really excited with where this movement is going, with the changes that we are going to see on the future of America because of what parents are doing. | ||
| Tina Deskovic, can I get all of your contacts and coordination points, ma'am? | ||
| Yeah, first and foremost, MomsForLiberty.org. | ||
| Our social media is all MomsTheNumberForLiberty on Twitter and Facebook and anywhere that you want to try to find us. | ||
| Personally, I'm Tina Deskovich. | ||
| My name's on the screen. | ||
| It's not easy to spell on both Facebook and on Twitter. | ||
| So, follow us. | ||
| Get plugged in. | ||
| Please, please, please join or start your local chapter. | ||
| You can do that on our website. | ||
| We need everyone in this fight. | ||
| Tina, thank you very much. | ||
| Honored to have you on here. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Tina Descartes, the moms for liberty. | ||
| I want to go to, so tomorrow at, we're going to start this over again. | ||
| We're going to be basically also live later tonight. | ||
| There's going to be another drop in Maricopa. | ||
| We're going to be either joining Charlie Kirk's, we're either going to be joining Charlie Kirk's stream. | ||
| We'll be up on our getter. | ||
| I want to make sure everybody in the audience understands, go together, look for us, look for Grace Chong, Captain Bannon, putting up notifications of what we're going to be. | ||
| The fight in Arizona couldn't be more intense, couldn't be tougher, we couldn't be more focused on it. | ||
| So make sure everybody goes. | ||
| Another drop tonight, we're going to get into all of it. | ||
| Also, In addition, back here tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, every day we're going to have the leadership fights. | ||
| We're going to have what's really happening on closing on this majority in the House of Representatives. | ||
| They're starting immediately with this debacle that's going to be the lame duck. | ||
| President Trump kicks off tomorrow. | ||
| His special announcement. | ||
| We've got a five-person team. | ||
| We've actually got the largest team I think of anybody. | ||
| That's just war room. | ||
| With our partners at Real America's Voice is by far the largest team down there to cover it. | ||
| We're going to have wall-to-wall coverage. | ||
| All day tomorrow. | ||
| In fact, maybe even starting at night with a live stream and of course tomorrow morning and then we're going to do live streams during the day. | ||
| We'll be back in the afternoon and we're trying to work out some, do some specials. | ||
| So, incredibly intense a time. | ||
| We want to make sure everybody is on, go to our getter feed. | ||
| We're updating people all the time with what we're going to be doing. | ||
| Of course, we want to see you back here at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. | ||
| Until then, this is Stephen K. Bannon. |
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